Upon impact, occupants of a vessel experience forces tending to cause physiological stress. It is desirable to reduce the physiological stress, thereby reducing trauma and injury.
The automotive safety application of the embodiment addresses immediate concerns of vehicle occupants. The recent increased CAFÉ standards stultify conventional efforts in employing acceptable means of dissipating the transfer of shock during any type of collision. The new standards mandate industry design to minimize available mass, traditionally used for protection and dissipative means. Vehicles must conform to the new 54.5 MPG standard as OEMs realize the sober expectation of more expensive and unsafe vehicles, causing millions to refuse economics of the new car market and its associated increases in death and injury.
Conventionally speaking, the answer to shielding the occupant during a sudden acceleration event is to secure him to a two ton mass, and place a few cushions between him and the mass. This may prevent some from ricocheting off the interior, or going through the windshield. Its commonly understood, those forces can stress the occupant, in a multitude of directions, to a fractious outcome. Yet, oftentimes in the presence of a stochastic vector, the occupant is unable to remain secured to receive any substantial form of anticipated protection.
The exercise of extensive efforts identifying the position of passengers, for qualifying deployment of airbags, and recognizing the possible negative consequences of airbag contact for an occupant out of acceptable positioning, may be an opportunity for the industry to recognize system limitation and potential for an alternative approach.
Even the most aggressive protection designs in occupant restraint systems, provide little or no means for controlled force deflection. Requiring the body and restraint system to assimilate full scale acceleration forces immediately upon impact. The roughly thirty percent who are saved as a result, can be thankful for the present state of technology. Yet, the present and future demands to resolve opportunities for safety are expected to only escalate.